21. Alandra

Arim concentrated his will on my mental walls, the weight of his power staggering.

"You didn't have to say the Djinn's name," I snorted, thinking rapidly to cover my blunder. "I've watched your Royal Four ever since they stepped foot in this plane, remember?"

"What's she talking about?" Darius frowned.

"What do you mean?" Marcus' eyes grew cold.

"Alandra." Aerolus turned me to face him with that caring intensity that made my heart flutter. "Tell us the truth, please."

I wondered if I should have mentioned this to him earlier. But he hadn't seemed too anxious about his brother's disappearance. And frankly, I'd been too concerned with other things to talk about my friend, Ellie.

I gauged the distance to the nearest exit. The window wasn't open, but the front door would do. If I had my Mir charm, I could have already been gone.

Aerolus saw me unconsciously finger my throat and grabbed my hand.

Then he waited.

"Relax. He's fine if he's with her." I tried to edge out of his grip, but a glance at his relatives suggested I was safer with him.

"Please explain." He squeezed my hand then let me go.

A show of trust, I supposed.

"Yeah, explain why you know about a Djinn in this world, and why you're glowing," Darius growled.

"Not one step closer," Aerolus said to his brother, and a sudden, impenetrable shield surrounded me.

"What the hell?" Marcus narrowed his eyes.

"Your telekinesis won't work, Marcus. And you won't breach my mental shields either." Aerolus sounded too calm. "You either, Uncle. If you give Alandra a moment, she'll tell us what we wish to know."

I watched him protect me from his family, men he loved, men he would die for. My heart raced, a strange feeling making me flush. I stared at the flow of magic between us, consumed by tenderness for him, and had to blink at the moisture welling in my eyes.

"Alandra?" Aerolus sounded worried.

"Sorry, something in my eye." I looked down to compose myself and cleared my throat, knowing now was as good a time as any to unburden myself. Maybe if I played it right, I'd get the help I needed to save not only the Storm Lords and Tanselm, but Aelle as well.

I glanced up, staring each Storm Lord in the eye. Fascinated by the differences in the identical brothers, I couldn't help seeing all their auras as quite separate. Aerolus', I noted clearly and with no small amount of satisfaction, had mixed with mine.

"Okay, let's get this over with." I allowed myself to be overcome with latent magic and stopped my glamor. Now I glowed, my hair and skin shinier, more alluring, my features beyond pretty to an unearthly beauty. If I did say so myself.

"I'm Alandra le Aelle, an Aellei currently out of favor with the royal court and the queen, my aunt," I said with apology to Aerolus. He nodded, not surprised. How very like him, all-knowing and unflustered. So irritating.

I felt nervous. Why couldn't he for a change?

I continued, "I openly disagreed with my aunt over the matter of conquering Tanselm, an act that resulted in my being here."

"She banished you to the same place the Storm Lords had gone?" Aerolus stared thoughtfully.

"Ah, no. Actually, the queen had planned on torturing me in Aelle in a manner I really don't want to think about, let alone describe." I shuddered at the thought. "I overheard her conversation about you four, and that Sin Garu meant to follow you here."

"Wait, wait," Marcus interrupted. "Explain the part about the Aellei wanting Tanselm. Until today, I thought the Aellei had all but vanished."

"We had. Vanished from Tanselm, that is." I leaned back against the kitchen counter. "Over a thousand years ago, when the Dark Tribes split, the Aellei, the Djinn, and the Dark Lords still occupied portions of Tanselm. Though Dark Lord control was steadily waning as the Light Bringers fought to regain the land, there was enough darkness in Tanselm's soil to sustain us all. There still is." A statement that would not go over well.

I glanced at Aerolus to see if he caught what I implied. His gaze sharpened, and he nodded for me to continue.

"You know the history. The tribes split. The Light Bringers, Storm Lords in particular, routed the Dark Lords and every other Dark or Shadowy race from Tanselm. Since then, the Djinn found refuge in Foreia, the Aellei in Aelle, and the Dark Lords in Malern and the Isle of Frigia, where they met our best buddies, the ice wraiths."

Arim frowned. "The Dark Lords created the ice wraiths."

"No, they didn't." The intellectual discourse lessened my anxiety. I could talk history all day and night long. "Despite what the Dark Lords would have you believe, the wraiths existed prior to Dark Lord intervention. Now, I agree the Dark Lords have shaped the wraiths into their own powerful tool. But make no mistake, the wraiths were once something quite different from what they are today."

"How can you know this?" Arim asked suspiciously. "I sense you are little more than a century old, if that."

"They have a Great Hall full of altee scrolls," Aerolus answered, pride in his voice, as if the scrolls belonged to him.

Darius and Marcus stared, open-mouthed.

Even Arim looked stunned. "Really?"

I nodded. "Open for all to see in the Gray Keep. I've seen every battle and scrape related to the Tribe Division. The magic that encapsulated those records is completely impartial to anything but truth. No Aellein, Dark Lord, or Light Bringer magic corrupts those accounts."

"I would greatly like to see those records." Arim was no longer hostile but still not completely friendly.

"If I can arrange it, I will. Like I said, I'm not exactly welcome in Aelle right now."

"Tell them about Sin Garu and Lidra," Aerolus said.

"I'm getting there." I frowned at him to be patient and turned back to his brothers and Arim. "I spied a Dark Lord and my aunt plotting and planning together. It's a funny thing though. Sin Garu is the Dark Lord I saw a year ago. But yesterday, I had a vision of sorts. I saw another Dark Lord. One very like Sin Garu, but not him."

"Two of them?" Darius groaned. "Great."

"Three, actually." Arim muttered under his breath, and his clothing suddenly went to rights, his bruises and bloodied skin fading into the picture of perfect health. He seemed as if steadying himself for something unpleasant. "There are three major Dark Lords involved in the takeover of our world. Sin Garu. His brother, Balen. And his sister, Lexa."

"A real family affair." I snorted. "You Light Bringers really know how to enrage everyone you meet. You've got Djinn, Aellei, Dark Lords, and wraiths on your collective asses."

"Tell us something we don't know." Darius' eyes glowed as he rumbled, "Like how involved you are in all this."

"Well, fire-breather, I can tell you that in addition to the Dark Lords, you're fighting a handful of Aellei and Djinn set on reclaiming Tanselm. Most Aellei are ignorant of the queen's plots. If they knew what I do — make that when they know — there'll be an insurrection in Aelle."

"So you say." Marcus stared at me with a strange curiosity, his gaze shifting from Aerolus' protective stance to me.

"So I know." I stood with my arms crossed and glared at Aerolus' brothers. Shadows, but as much as I admired them for their closeness, they could be an irritating lot.

I turned to Arim, the one person aside from Aerolus I definitely needed to convince. "I know my people. And I know the Djinn who's helping Cadmus. I've been watching Aerolus — ah, you all — for a year in this plane. In that time, a small faction of Djinn have been aiding your cause. Yes, aiding. One Djinn took Sin Garu to the Between, possibly at the cost of his own life.

"And Ellie Markham, the woman Cadmus can't keep his hands off, has been shielding and empowering him ever since Darius left." Though I had a feeling Ellie didn't know how much I was also helping Cadmus.

"Ellie Markham? Outpour Ellie?" Darius sounded dumbfounded. "But she's so normal."

"What, Djinn can't be normal?" Aggravated at his bias, I shook my finger at him. "You Light Bringers are so narrow-minded! Just because a being lives in Shadow or the Dark, you immediately associate them with evil. Well, that's just wrong.

"My kind live in Shadow, in both Light and Dark, and we aren't all evil. Ellie and the Djinn are Dark, not immoral. Yet because they can't live in the Light, you condemn them in the same breath you use to denounce the Dark Lords. Without Dark, there can be no Light. Did you ever think of that?"

Anger made me want to break something. Namely, a few Storm Lord skulls. Without thinking about it, I stirred the air in the room.

"Alandra." Arim glowered.

"What?"

"You might want to rethink your attack."